In communication networks, data units (e.g., IP packets) may be fragmented for various reasons. When fragmented data units are received, it may be necessary to efficiently reassemble the fragmented packets.
One problem associated with fragmentation is that loss of fragments can lead to inefficient use of resources. In particular, if a fragment of a data unit is lost during transmission across a computer network, different devices in the computer network may continue processing and forwarding other fragments of the transmitted data unit, even though such fragments are rendered superfluous (i.e., they will ultimately be dropped, e.g., by the target host, because they will not be able to reconstruct a complete data unit). As a result, target hosts and devices on the network may waste potentially valuable resources (e.g., computational resources, storage resources, and so on) processing superfluous fragments. Moreover, these superfluous fragments may needlessly consume bandwidth and contribute to network delay and congestion and potentially prevent important data from being received in a timely manner.